Easter III
May Crowning Procession
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
From Friday’s viewpoint, it looks to be another dark, cold weekend for Mother’s Day. Ah well, we will remember the two blessed days of May we were given, and be thankful. For the rest, think inside. A beautiful bright shining May Altar in your home, and a whole chapel in your heart, well lit with virtue and bursting with interior beauty, as St. Catherine of Siena urges. And what a way to look at family life as well. Think of father or husband as Jesus or Joseph, and mother or wife as Mary, siblings as apostles, as you serve them. What a holy, happy shining home life that could be. St. Thérèse, too, lived that way. And the weather in Normandy was mostly humid and wet, all year ’round.
Still, on the off chance of an outside May Crowning, men have been working on the cloister for caps and maybe even repairing the breach in the wall. Very scriptural and cheering to see. The roofers are doing the grotto pond this time around. We are grateful. And how green is the grass, how peaceful and bright the cloister garden. Be sure to visit. The irises are in bloom. Honeysuckle and miniature lilacs round out the ground.
The sanctuary was so beautiful for St. Joseph’s Solemnity on Wednesday, and is again for today’s second St. Joseph feast and our Blessed Mother’s Crowning. Thank you. But do remember, such splendor honors God and His saints, even as it invites us to linger, or come back a bit. How delightful is Thy dwelling place! If the feasts of earth are so fine (we are meant to ponder), what must be those of Heaven?
Last Summer the Sisters of Our Lady of Reparation decided to switch to a blue habit, to show their devotion to Our Lady, even as they continue their Benedictine way of life. They have chosen today thus to honor our Blessed Mother with a new habit. The silver pendants they designed themselves, are meant to remind them of a life of reparation, especially to the Blessed Sacrament through Our Lady. We are grateful to the Sisters for their prayers, as well as their work with the catechism children. Today they are supervising the First Communion children, whose first job, and great honor each May, is to crown Our Lady.
Fr. McGuire and I were at our wits end last week trying to figure out how to feed the Fathers. For some reason we were out of culinary inspiration, and poor Fr. McGuire wandered the frozen food aisles of both Kroger and Meijer looking for ideas. In the absence of chief cookout cook Fr. McKenna, the rest of us shy away from real cooking, and by the time we get to thinking about supper…nothing comes.
But Thursday night worked out okay, a “stone soup” kind of story. Fr. McGuire has mastered Fr. McKenna’s coleslaw recipe, and did baked potatoes which, if you disregard the smoke (we’re used to smoke at St. Gertrude!) turned out fine. I found one package of sweet and sour shrimp from Lent in the freezer, and somebody had brought some cold chicken the other day. Oh, and we still had the German chocolate cake from St. Joseph’s Day. And berries. So, it turned out to be a pretty good meal, after all. Family life. We are grateful.
Don’t forget Fr. Joseph Collins’ Requiem Mass on Wednesday. A group of us priests will be coming together, to remember and pray for a brother priest. Each priest does so much good in his allotted lifetime, good which is soon forgotten, as is he. But God wills it should be so, for He rewards, He judges, He punishes and purifies. But let us show our gratitude.
Although today’s procession will draw many of you to crown Our Lady, tomorrow’s beckons as well, as we heed the Fatima call to pray the Rosary, crowning her with a different kind of rose. Fatima. A Moslem name! Think of it. There is a world of meaning in that name for us today. Protection surely, peace as well, and prodigies of grace for those who persevere with the daily rosary, or go out of their way to honor it publicly.
God bless our mothers. God bless you, loyal and loving children!
–Bp. Dolan